Image fusion has been widely used in medical field in recent years. Image fusion refers to a technology of combining two or more images of different information types into one image to acquire more information. In the fusion of medical images, the combination mode of medical images varies according to different observation purposes. For instance, images acquired from different imaging devices (also referred to images of different modalities) or images of different sequences acquired from the same imaging device are fused. A sequence refers to a plurality of parallel images that are acquired by an imaging device from different positions of an imaged object at substantially the same moment, and the image corresponding to each position is referred to as a slice. Therefore, how to manage various medical images in a fusion device effectively becomes more and more important.
In some existing fusion devices, each image input to be fused and a fused image respectively occupy a window on a display screen, leading to that display window resource is in shortage when there are a plurality of input images to be fused or a plurality of fused images are needed.
In other existing fusion devices, a plurality of input images are arranged in a thumbnail form and only one image can be operated at one moment. After switching to an input image, the operation on the former input image cannot be kept.